Thursday, July 26, 2012

The tinkering with Classic Traveller
continues, I can't help it, I tell ya. Much like the D&D edition
0.75 that I always wanted (a mechanically-slimmed down AD&D or
beefed up OD&D depending on your perspective) I find myself
wishing that there was a nice happy space between the elegance (yet
gaping holes) of Classic Traveller and the bloated detail (forget the
mechanics) of Megatraveller.

Actually I really find myself wishing
for a simple, old-schoolish game that is softer in its science and
weirder in its tone, but that's for another post. In the meantime
here are some variant tweaks and some Space Cantons campaign news for
some local color.

Alternate Starting Chargen Skills

Player characters can opt to make new
choices to what you get upon enlistment or promotion in a service
(existing Space Cantons players can opt to retro-fit any skill
choices). All skills listed trump existing rules in Book 1. New or
tweaked skills are listed in italics.

On Enlistment:

Army, Autorifle-1 or Combat
Rifleman-0

Marines, Chain-Cutlass-1 or
Combat Rifleman-0

Merchants and Other, Streetwise-0

Navy, Vacc Suit-1

Scouts, Pilot-1 or Survival-1

Scientist (from Citizens of the
Imperium), Hard Science-1 or Soft Science-1 or
Comp-1 AND one Science at 0.

On Commission/Promotion:

Army Lieutenants receive Snub-Pistol-1
or Pistols-0

Marine Lieutenants receive
Snub-Pistol-1 or Bolt-Pistol-1

Merchant First
Officer, Pilot-1 or Navigation-1

Navy Captain, +1 SOC or Vibro-Foil-1

The Cantonment Holo-stem Report from
Raving Foxoid News

Deputies of His Most Resplendent and
Indomitable Overlord Vunce Augustus are vigorously denying that there
was a massive explosion that rocked the Novo Marlankh Prime
Spaceport yesterday. “We are most certainly not investigating
baseless rumors that the fuel compartment of Astro-Hermetic
College star-cog combusted on detonation of Cantonment
Marine-issue blastex,” they added.

One of two Spacers Guild
dromon-traders has returned from a senseless and foolhardy expedition
into Weirdspace. The ship was shuttled with great perspicacity into
one of the guild's tower-hangars. Ground crews noted what looked to
be blast marks on the ship's stern.

Underclerks of Hydracorp's
shipping arm are confirming that two metric tons (a cantonal
“crapton”) of depleted-uranium, zertax-covered snub pistol rounds
were not accounted for in their recent run to Outpost Nine's
planetary militia. “We are confident that they will show
up...somewhere,” they commented with officious shrugs and sweeping
gestures toward the sprawling chaos of their spaceport storage
facilities.

What the Cantonment Scout Service
has deemed an ACO (Anomaly Class Object, term for the various
celestial oddities that appeared through the Veil) has appeared
beyond Leguiin, a gas giant in the Kugelworld system. Upon completion
of the fortnight-long Subsector Stellar-Surfing Competitions on Novo
Marklankh the Scouts vow to “check it out, man.”

Monday, July 23, 2012

Strange is the name of that ancient
race, the Eldur. The tight-lipped followers of the Silent God are
said to have coined the word, though its meaning “where a God
resides” puzzles savants and sages throughout the Cantons to this
day. Perhaps there is truth in the old folk tales of them as pitiless
eaters of a long-forgotten deity or perhaps it involves another of
that race's arcane cruel jokes.

Hailing from beyond the Veil that hangs
between our world and the dark, fell place where life runs on rigid
iron rails along great and horrible paths of adventure, the Eldur
(often just called the Eld) are said to rule over vast estate piled
high with tower-manses, monoliths, slave pens, protein vats and
baroque, gargantuan gleaming metal vessel-machines

In this world the few who have
witnessed—and survived--their incursions note that their appearance
rarely seems by chance they invariably are seen performing strange,
determined missions in the furthest corners of the Weird.

What moves their constant machinations
inside of machinations little is known, but reports do consistently
match up around their physical appearance: pale-whitish skin, long
backward sloping skulls, delicate digits; and heights ranging around
seven feet. They also favor bright single colors and enameled armor.

The Eld heavily favor long,
ultra-slender sabres; short, nastily-barbed stabbing swords; and
elaborately-flourished pole arms. Expert craftsmanship gives such
weapons +1 to damage. There is a 25% that each group encountered over
seven in number, that one of the Eld encountered will carry a piece
of eldritch technology such as a Tube of Integument, Mindbox, or
Interfogulator (see the upcoming Roustabout's Guide to the Hill
Cantons).

All Eld are immune to the effects of
sleep, charm, suggestion, and acid-based attacks.

Inspired, in part, by these guys and these and a few others that will remain vaguely mysterious to keep the players guessing.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Stealing a page from my blogging friends today I am
presenting an open question and answers on Kezmarok, a half-ruined metropolis
just south of the Hill Cantons setting proper.
Below are some questions from players on Google Plus (a careful reader
will note a certain self-interested cast to them). Feel free to ask away in comments if you are
interested.

The Illuminated have several internal factions. The largest
are the Realis, a somewhat moderate, fiscally-conservative faction that mostly
just wants to downscale the city: raze most of the semi-ruined buildings, wall
off the dangerous sectors of the city, downsize the reliance on the mercs of
the bonded companies, etc. A number of the Great Hostel owning families and the
larger native bazaar merchants support this pole.

The second largest faction of the Illuminated are called the Defeatists by
their detractors. They want all of the above and call for a negotiated
settlement with the besiegers. They are well backed by Galldred and the some of
the foreign merchants plus a few of the local artisan guilds.

Supporting the Banners is roughly half of all native military officers under
the Lord-Marshal rank. A small grouping, but with some juice given their
strategic position. Their leadership is secretive, but there are some outspoken public
leaders like the vainglorious Hulkos the Harried.
﻿

Who is in charge of
the city's finances?﻿

It's a complicated procurement/disbursement dance between
the Council of Autarchs and the layers of lower bureaucracy. Forms and orders
have to be signed and counter-signed for weeks or months. But is known that the
Captain-General's Chief Purser can move that expedite or hamper that red-tape
process immensely.

﻿

Who's in charge of
home ownership? As in, where you can live and why and how much you get taxed
for it.

About a third of the great abandoned (or semi-inhabited) sections
of the city—Kezmarok shrank from its height of 300,000 to its current 40,000—are
currently owned by the governing council’s Land Trust. The remaining
two-thirds is privately owned by the old impoverished aristocratic families and
is essentially in stasis--as is the wont of the private sector across ages when confronted
with real, abiding crisis.

Unoccupied buildings (mostly in some state of ruination) can
be bought from the trust at full price, but with a (relative) minimum of
red-tape and a five-year year rebate on all assessment fees, taxes, and bribes.
Currently occupied and maintained buildings are at a premium and you should expect
to pay quite a bit more than you would up in the Cantons.

Squatting is also quite common off the main avenues. The
main danger there though comes from the larger squatter bands (who have bribed
their way into semi-permanent fiefdoms) and things that go bump in the night. Is
there an M-U guild?

There is no guild as such and as in the Cantons to the north
magic-users are rare and tend to stick to private, unobserved lives. It being a
larger, if reduced, city there are at least two known, informal salon-circles
(or cabals) of sorcerers, wizards, witches and warlocks. An inquiring, discrete
soul could put out feelers . One such group tends to congregate around the
upper floor of the Finestra hostel, the other Duke Mraz’s Folly.

Do the Turko-Fey have positive relations
with any known nation? What would they say about them? What would an average
Kezmaroki say about them? What about a soldier?

The Turko-Fey hail from a pocket plane called on this world “The
Summer Country”, a place they share in part with other polities of their race. Even in their home plane are seen as
something of a cryptic annoyance.

In the world of the Hill Cantons they are said to only have
passably decent relations with the Scarlet Sultanates of the far South and with
the mercenary captains of the Overkingdom.

To the latter they are considered to be easy if erratic
employers. They expect little more than guarding the camps, an annual counter-sally
and an occasional abrupt shelling of the outer works of the city. Many returning landsknechts will complain
about the strange pay schedule (seemingly random months and years without pay
then a generous showering of reddish-gold coins), the cold distant quality of
their employers and the dream-like lethargic feeling of the camps. There is a
great sense that something is being waited on and that time is a slow,
meandering river.

The average Kezmaroki considers the Turko-Fey to be a cipher,
almost like a force of nature. Something unknowable and without much to do
about but complain endlessly. The more cocky of soldiers--especially those
affiliated with the Banners of the Five--believe that they are a paper tiger.

Who has the best rumors? Who has the most rumors? Who trades information
for money, and what are their rates?

Resident foreigners by far and away, native Kezmarokis are
almost to a person inward looking with a tendency toward a listless ennui.

What does the city
trade? What's the most unique touristy bullshit thing I could buy for my
friends back home? What can't I get anywhere else?

The city has subsided on centuries of essentially trading
away its vast, dwindling wealth: tapestries, statues, gold baubles, silks, etc.

The city does produce in gigantic cave-complexes a wide
variety of edible fungi. Only two species are exported: one phallic-shaped cap an
aphrodisiac, the other a shelf-like mushroom producing a cardamom-like taste. A
“floral” bloom of both varieties in a delicate spiral glass vase (another local
export) is considered a well-received, if kitschy gift.

How are the dead disposed of? How upset would people get if they were
eaten, dissected, animated, etc?

There are vast vaults, passages, and catacombs honeycombing
the pink-grey granite of the Rock. There
are several entrances to the upper levels where the dead are housed, the most
well-known of being through the rear burial complex of the Patriarchate. Most
larger temples will have some access and it is known that the fungus beds of
the city have side passages into that maze.

Defiling the dead is considered an abomination in the sight
of the Sun Lord. (A quick thrice counter-clockwise swirling of three fingers
and a pinky with a flourish.)

What breeds of dog and
other domesticates are found in the city?
Dogs are considered unclean and bad luck.

How good is the
library? Am I allowed in? How can I gain access if not?

The Patriarchate and Decade-King’s libraries are among the largest in the world.
Access is dependent on the goodwill of those institutions.

How would I be expected to resolve a
dispute of property? How about a dispute of honor? An academic dispute?
The most bloody of duels—some of them escalating into small, pitched battles—are
to be found in the various ivory towers of the city. Dueling is common among the gentry. Preferred weapons are the glaive, bolo and
heavy saber.

All other matters are settled in a ponderous circuit of
courts presided by secular magistrates.

What traits and technologies have the
Kezmaroki adopted from the Turko-Fey over the years, and vice-versa?﻿

None on
either side other than a shared malaise.

What are the laws regarding street performance? What about
trespassing and window-peeping?﻿

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Being
deprived of my weekly game by the craptastic internet connection here at the
beach house on the lovely Redneck Riveria (oh first world problems). I have
nothing to do but write and design more for the campaign. Here is part three of
our Great Tour of Kezmarok. See parts one and two here and here.

Organizations

Political
jockeying and philosophizing (abstract theory always trumping praxis in the
city) is a full-time spectator sport for the shabby
gentility.

The Great Path of Restoration. This league seeks to restore
the absolute power of the city’s traditional ruler, The Golden Evexrator. Wracked
with internal disagreements over length of the ruler’s term and method of
ritual disfigurement for the deposed. Popular with the shabbiest of the
impoverished aristocracy.

Illuminated League of the Refoundation. Local citizens who recognize
the deep decline of the city and seek to formally divest the city-state of its
(long lost) maritime empire. Shockingly the most radical elements in the league
seek a settlement with the Turko-Fey sitting outside the gates. A small minority if well-organized faction.

Wellsprings of the Crowd. An “astroturf” organization
funded and maintained by the Council of Autarchs to bolster their political
clout.

Banners of the Five. A small militaristic party
popular with native junior officers. This dangerous and crazed radical party
seeks to break the five-century military deadlock and defeat the besieging
host. The name is a reference to five semi-mythical Kezmaroki hero-generals.

Local Religions

Ultra Orthodox Synod of the
Sun Lord. Despite
its name and hidebound observation of the oldest, strictest and most absurd
ritual practices of the Sun Lord’s supernal temple, a reasonably tolerant sect.
Shockingly other faiths are allowed to openly practice their religion in
non-hidden places of worship. Apostates are however heavily taxed and required
to wear indigo wheel badges.

The Minyaan of the Silent God. Not much is known about the
tight-lipped, low-key local practioners of this faith. Their prominent
hexagonal fane has no windows and only a single, low sunken door as an
entrance.

The Grand Church of
Latter-Day Hyperborea.
Small, mystical order practicing “neo-Hyperborean” religion. Known to annoy
locals with their drum circles, toad and elk-head costumes, and dervish-dancing.

Temple of Svatek the
Crocodile Godling.
This tiny, somewhat sleepy sectlet worships a local demi-god of vigilance. A number
of local worshippers were arrested en masse recently after leading an inexplicable
riot in which they rushed around beating outlanders from the Hill Cantons with
sticks.

Notable Personages of
Kezmarok

The Ur-Patriarch, Ummas the Unctuous. Jaded, bored head of the
Ultra Orthodox Synod of the Sun Lord.

The Golden Evexrator,
Decade-King of all Lands Kezmaroki on the Rock and Beyond. The head of state--at least
nominally. Serves for 10 years before being deposed, blinded (humanely as
possible) and boxed on the ears.

Vorish Kohniun,
Captain-General of the Great Rock. The functional ruler of Kezmarok. Heads
the Council of Autarchs, a beancounting and officious ruling council.

Gabrous Swelter, Chief
Gaoler, and Torture-Aesthete, of the Pits Below.

The sale of intoxicants is strictly—and lucratively--regulated
in the city. The typical constellation of
seedy inns, taverns, and other watering holes is simply not seen in Kezmarok
(though a few illegal speakeasies stubbornly exist). Instead you have enormous, teetering centuries-old
edifices, the great hostels, sprawling across entire city blocks.

Because half of all the income from booze, powders, and smokeable herbs is owed to
the City, the hostels have spread their commercial range across a range of
activities—food, lodging, games, gambling, nefarious meetings, bawdy theater,
romantic trysts, etc-- and thus have become central hubs of social life in the
city.

Though each varies wildly in its character, each hostel
does have a few common features. Each hostel is from 3-6 floors high with a
dizzying array of sunny verandas, patios, trellises and balconies jutting out
over the streets and structures below. Each floor caters progressively higher to
a classier clientele, indeed after the second level customers are only those
who pay exclusive membership dues and undergo initiation rites. Such “club” membership
has become important to the status jockeying of residents.

A sample of the Great Hostels:

Finestra, Lodge of a Thousand
Mirrored Gazes.
Famed for its many, baroquely-famed mirrors and gawking, ever-judging clientele.
Past the swill served on the first floor, the food and drink is quite good.

Ulthnarn of the Hanging Blade. The martially-themed
Ulthnarn is noted for its many games of skill and chance, indeed it’s the only
hostel that has a full hobbit-boloing arena. Gentlemen’s games can be found on
the upper floors.

Duke Mraz’s Folly. The hruz, hallucinogenic
mollusk paste, is out of this world as is the food. Decorated with strange shiny
polished suits of armor.

Games of the Great Hostels

Daemono. Tile-filpping game played
with two-sided mosaic pieces. One side traditionally exhibits solid whites of
Law, the other a multitude of vibrant colors for Chaos. The game is mostly
played by the better sorts of the city.

Stonelegging. Two participants are in the
ring. Live cockatrices are introduced into their trousers. The first one whose
leg is petrified loses. In the better establishments a mage is on hand to
reverse the process. Stonelegging is the NASCAR of Kezmarok.

Brinksman. Card game using bluffing,
bluster and dumb luck. Anyone clearing the 21-count limit is slapped with a
sand-weighted stick by custom.

Wrestling. Conducted in the nude except
for gaudily covered harnesses. A sheet must remain between the wrestlers at all
times for propriety’s sake.

Hobbit boloing. A wild Halfling is released
into the ring. The first participant to knock him down wins the purse. All the
contestants lose if the wee one escapes to the far gate.

Stave-fights. Just like it says, duels
with quarter staffs. Usually conducted on narrow high-raised platforms.
Sometimes combined with stonelegging and/or wrestling on slow nights.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Thanks to ruthlessly
killing a PC—and having a party willing to travel a great distance and plop
down a big chunk of swag for a resurrection—I finally made good on moving play
out of the 120 mile stretch of the Hill Cantons proper. Play for the last month
has centered in the half-ruined digs of a city—and it’s vast, sprawling
undercity--I have been wanting to introduce for years now.

What follows is Part One
of my introduction to this new sandbox.

Crappy Players Map (click to enlarge.)

The ancient Southlands metropolis
of Kezmarok has been known my many names over the aeons: Vu Commoron, Zenopolus, The City Three
Quarters as Old as the Firmament of the Heavens, The City of 500 Graces (or the
City of 500 Sybarites and Popinjays to some wags), the list rolls on.

Five long centuries of besiegement
by the ever-patient and languid forces of the Turko-Fae have severed it’s dominance
over a vast network of fortified ports. The resulting steady collapse and abandonment
of great stretches of the mile-and-a-half long city have diminished its once
teeming magnificence, but it stubbornly clings to a sad grandeur high on the Great
Rock.

Barely 40,000 of its
former 300,000 residents still make their home in the city, and a good quarter
of those are the Northern cantonal mercenaries, bonded outsiders and slick operators
looking to make a golden wheel (Ur Kolo) or two from the largesse of the city
vaults.

Of its native citizens,
gone are many of the common castes. The great legions of the indentured and
poorer wage earners have long shipped out for greener pastures, northwards to
the Cantons or southwards over the Persimmon Sea.

While clinging like the
city to former greatness many of the nobility—almost a third of the residents
now--have doggedly stayed, but downshifted into a “shabby gentility”. It’s not
uncommon to come across a city block of half-collapsed red marble manses with
great taub-taub trees growing through them and families of these pauperized
patricians patching long-handed down robes and doublets, writing epic poems, polishing
dented heirlooms, and acting out parlor theater in the remaining shells.

Defense of the triple
great walls that choke off the peninsula from the mainland—and the great silken
pavilions and stockades of the besiegers—is in the hands of the Bonded
Companies. Many a northern landsknecht, gendarme, or reaver has made an easy
lifetime of serving a “long bond”, a 20-30 year contract of service walking the
walls and performing in the mostly bloodless and symbolic sallies against the
great host outside.

Friday, July 13, 2012

A few updates on what happening with
the South Texas Minicon we are organizing August 18.

Getting Registered. First of
all, registration is still the “right price” free, but if you are
coming please boogie over to our special new minicon website to register and get
oriented (updates will be posted there over the next few weeks). (Big thanks to Brad for getting this up and running.)

You can find registration here
and information on logistics and the game schedule (full schedule
TBA shortly) here.
Forums are active here and we will start using that as the clearinghouse for discussion of
games and other chit chat.

Supporting the Minicon and Win
Judges Guild Swag. Infamous NTRPG Con Bad Mike (who will be
attending and selling/giving away goodies from his giant roleplaying
stash) is generously running a fundraising auction to support the
convention expenses. Please go here and help us keep the minicon free as a liberated avian.

Game Schedule. Threeslots of three game for each (possibly up to six for each slot if we reserve another
room) from 10 am-10 pm.

The games to-date:

Jeff Dee, Bethorm, a Tekumel adventure
supplement

Talzheimer Mrr, Cavemaster RPG

Norm Harman, Mutant Future

Ed Teixeira , 5150 Star Army

Mack, old school starship mini battles

Brad Ncube, DCC RPG (tentatively)

Yours Truly, By This Axe fantasy mini
battles and (possibly) old school D&D

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Update and some exciting news (for us in the hills at any rate) coming this evening or tomorrow morning about the South Texas Minicon August
18th. For now here is more setting info, house rules
(full PDF),
and theme music for players and voyeurs of the Space Cantons
Traveller mini-campaign now going into its second exploratory mission
into the cosmic weird Thursday night.

Theme music in keeping with the
70s-trip space opera aesthetic.

Learning New Skills

Automatic 0-level
skills. Characters are assumed to have 0-level skill
(no modifier) in Vacc Suit, Air/Raft, ATV, Steward, a single gun
skill of their choice, and a single blade skill of their choice.

Experience.
After every session, any surviving character can opt to make a check
to acquire a 0-level skill. If there was none directly used in the
adventure roll 2d6, on a roll of 10+ (+1 if INT or EDU over 9+) the
character can pick any skill. The player can add +4 to the check if
rolling for a specific skill in an unranked skill that he/she used in
the adventure (actual success/failure is irrelevant). Example:
Mongo X decided to try and rewire the ship's console in the adventure
(for God knows what reason). He opts to try and take Elec-0 as a
skill and adds 4 to his dice roll.

Advanced Skills.
Skills from Books 4 and 5 can be learned at 0-level for a training
cost of 10,000 CR. This includes: Interrogation, Hunting, Survival,
Ship Tactics, Zero G combat, Demolition, Air Vehicle, Water Vehicle,
and Prospecting. Composite gun skills from Book 4 can be learned at
0-level for 50,000 CR such as Combat Rifleman, Pistols, Lasers
(includes blasters), and Zero-G. Composite melee weapons skills can
be taken at 30,000 CR: small blades, blunt weapons, long blades, and
polearms.

Cerebral Implants
and Neurostimulators. Learn a skill-1 of your choice for
100,000 CR. The procedure can only be used twice lest your brain
explode.

Nonstandard Weapons

Snub Pistol (as
per Book 4: Merc). CR 300. Can shoot fatal (3D) or stun rounds (20 CR
for a clip of 6). Usable in vaccum.

Web Grenade. CR
200. Produces a 10-foot diameter sticky web lasts for 1d6 hours at
the point of impact.

Setting Info

Bolo.
Your
employee-owned, "post-work" exploration coop. All large-scale "capital investments" (ie the ship, office and hangar) are owned collectively by the bolo.
Individual crew members get equal shares of the session's profits.

Known
Players. Beyond
your bolo, there are a number of local factions or individuals who
are interested in your findings beyond the Weird:

Monday, July 9, 2012

Of course as noted many times on this
blog, I just can't simply play a game as written without unwisely
messing under the hood. Bah orthodox RAWers be damned, this is the
first post of likely a series of variant whoha for Classic Traveller
for my Cantonment campaign.

Mountebanks

With the mounting decadance of the
Cantonment, Mountebanks (also known as “Grifters”) are a
shockingly common career choice for the quick tongued and amoral.

Though some enjoy only moderately-shady employment by the various factions,
circles, cults, and collectives as “fixers” and spies, most
Mountebanks ply their hustles as a life on the make throughout the
confederation.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Last night I ran Traveller for the
first time in a good long spell. In fact it was so long ago that the
Soviet Union was still gearing up for parachuting into a small
Wyoming town and New Coke had the nation up in outraged arms, that's
how long ago.

It felt very much like seeing an old
friend, the achingly-sweet remembering why you
dug hanging out with them in the first place. But also like meeting
an old friend there was the odd perspective shifts, the slow jumps
that remind you how much you have changed.

Coming back to D&D four years ago
was different. Yes, there were a number of dramatic and subtle shifts
that changed how I play the game, but overall there was an exuberance
in embracing the core play-style and the great body of older pulp
fantasy that inspired it.

With Traveller I felt after dusting off
the books that I could only meet it halfway. The system felt as
enjoyable as I remembered, but there was something about the implied
feel/setting/background literature that just doesn't as much for me
as it did. The kind of hard(ish) sci-fi of the 1950s-70s: the Poul
Anderson, Jerry Pournelle, E.C. Tubbs, H. Beam Piper (as much as I
love Lord Kalvan), etc. school of projecting their now stuffy feeling
cold war conservatism into the distant future of space opera. And the
GDW house setting, the Imperium, which became more and more hardwired
into the game itself left me even colder honestly.

That's not totally accurate, there was
part of that era that has been inspiring me a great deal—besides
still loving Jack Vance's contributions in that period—the art of a
certain school of sci-fi artists of the 1970s. The great
awe-producing full-color works of those four Terran Trade Authority
books and OMNI magazine illustrations that crashed their way into my
consciousness in 1979 just before getting into roleplaying proper
(and CT was always my second game): the stunning work of Angus McKie, Jim Burns, Peter Elson, Peter Andrew Jones, Roger Dean, Chris Foss, Chris Moore
and others.

The sensuous feeling, hallucinogenic
influenced grand starships, full of organic, sloping curves and
slender towers. The great mystery and pathos of drifting space hulks.
The contrast of the primitive and the far future with the hint of the
great swords & sorcery cover art of that period. The sense of
something truly immense and unknowable out there among the stars.

All these elements hold great truck with me and
influenced what I started stocking all those grey, unsurveyed planets
on that subsector map from yesterday.

Friday, July 6, 2012

I have been trying to resist the space
opera bug for months now—Jeff Rients' Traveller Leviathan campaign
reports just made matters much worse.

Basta. I surrender.

Starting today at 8:30 I will be
running an on-again, off-again Classic Traveller mini-campaign on
Google Plus.

The mini-campaign takes place on the
outer edge of the Cantonment, a distant-future confederation of 31
worlds. The Cantonment has mysteriously just emerged from the
confines of a pocket universe it was shoved into (just as
mysteriously) five centuries ago to find it has been shoved to
another spiral arm of the galaxy.

All around it is the yawning darkness
of unexplored space.

The coreworlds of the Cantonment are in
sad shape for confronting this development. An inward malaise and
weariness has set in the long years of splendid isolation. Endless
rounds of flower wars, ponzi schemes, financial collapses, feuds,
peccadillos, insurrections, and the like have wracked the confederacy
leaving its central government weak and inert.

But some are stepping forward to face
outwardly into the stars. Grasping corporations, ambitious planetary
radas (councils), and now even spunky little “bolos” (small,
cooperatively-owned outfits leftover from the Autonome Upheaval) are
outfitting their own ships.

You are one such bolo. Pooling your
savings and pensions from your years in service you have purchased a
200-ton Stormchild-class Space Xebec (pictured above and statted
below). The ship only crews six and your bolo is larger, so expect
some rotation (cue the in-game excuse for rotating player
composition). You start on the edge of known space at a squalid,
little planet called Outpost Nine (0801 Outpost Nine C446353-9
Non-Industrial).

A small detail, you still owe payments
on the ship. Every six months for the next 20 years you must pay
300,000 cr—or you are going to make the repo list pretty damn
quick. And the life of a space repo man is always intense.

House Rules

1. We will be using the three LBBs and
the Citizens of the Imperium for character generation. Any number of
terms are acceptable.

2. Failure to meet a survival roll in
chargen gives you the choice between “cake” (-1 to one of the
first three stats and forced discharge from service with no
skills/benefits for that term, add two years to your age) or “death”.

3. Any melee weapon can be bought in a
suped-up version that cuts all to hit modifiers against armor in half
(rounding down). Such weapons cost three times the normal price. Feel
free to add “vibro”, “chain”, “power”, or what to the
name of it to sex it on up.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Sweet
screamin' Yeenohu, graduated from the Rel Astra School of Hermetic
Iridology today! Drank a whole case of Velunian brandy and ate a cold
fowl with the guys before our silver ran out. Lucky I sobered up
before the sun went down, because man does the city get all kinds of cuh-razy what with all
the slovenly trulls, press gangs, spectres, and were-tigers running
around.

Patchwall 2, 576

Should have listened to my mom about
remaining 0-level, because now I just have this crappy degree and normal man status to my name. With saves like this, what am I going to do?

Patchwall 18, 576

Should I change my name to an anagram?

Ready'reat 5, 576

Career path here I come. I was milling
around the Old Quarter when a buff man in ring mail carrying a
glaive-guisarme picked me out of the crowd and told me I was just the
kind of dude he needed for his band of 20-200 “reclamation
experts”. He assured me that his band was strictly neutral and that
they didn't go in for that “chaotic evil brigandry kind of stuff”
so I said “fuck yeah.”

He told me I need to bundle up my gear
and hump it as they needed to get out pdq on account of the great
need for normal men in the Inhabited And/or Patrolled
Areas--especially those with Temperate and Sub-Tropical Conditions
and all.

Ready'reat 6, 576

Did I luck out signing up with these
guys. As I was shipping out I noticed a gang of crazy fuckers with
beards. I was desperate enough I would have joined them and today I'd
be running around barefoot screaming my head off with two weapons in
each hand instead of getting my nice shiny new suit of boiled
leather, light crossbow, and 2-8 gold pieces.

These dudes are a class act too. Not
only is the boss a Lord but his lieutenant is a Champion. Both of
them could fall 60 feet without dying! Sarge told me that we have a
one in four chance of being joined Enchanter, Warlock, or Sorcerer
too if we get lucky!

Fuck yeah!

Sunsebb 11, 576

Tough month, diary. It was cool when we
just sat around that informal camp and all, but we have been marching
up and down the countryside for like four weeks. That last patch of
Uninhabited/Wilderness Areas was totally off the chain!

Sarge says we're looking for a cave
complex with a secret entrance or a small castle, but I was like
“good luck”.

Fireseek 8, 577

I doubted it, but we found a totally
stupendous underground lair underneath this ruined abbey. This place
extends for miles and has like scythe traps, trapezoidal rooms, tons
of branching passages, and shit.

Sucks Dispater's hairy balls though
because Sarge has broken us up into small groups and we have to march
around the first level in ten-minute intervals. We can't even enter
the levels below.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Though colloquially called
“zomabastodons” by feckless wags who care not for life and limb,
the Mammut Morbidium is a reanimated spirit-demon of the more
mundane mastodon.

It is said that Kostej the Deathless himself had a
hand in the base sorcery that first revivicated the lifeless corpses
of the wooly elephantine pack animals so very much beloved by the
northern rump-states of the Hyperboreans in the long glacial age that
ended their civilization.

Whatever their origin, Zombastodons
have been imbued with a relentless fury at two-legged mammals--and a
cold, undying semi-intelligence to sustain that rage over the
centuries. They appear as shattered shells of their former
robustness, mangy hide splitting, exposed rib bones, and a demonic
red glow to their eyes.

Zombastodons have the same range of
magical protections as do the more human-appearing undead. They can
be turned by clerics as per their hit dice (or as “vampires” in
some systems).

Though their tusks are somewhat
desiccated and gnarled by the ravages of time, each tusk is still
able to fetch 1d4 x 100 gp from collectors of curios and the arcane.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The Hyperboreans play a prominent and
reoccurring role in the Hill Cantons campaign. Their cycolpean halls,
haunted battlefields, tomb complexes and sprawling undercities stand
testimony to the far reach of that time-space distant northern
empire.

Jarek the Nagsman, Marlank bon vivant
and sage, maintains that the World Turtle that the Hill Cantons rests
on swims through time in a series of dialectical mini and macro
cycles upwards to the End of History. The other planes, he
contends, may be the antithesis or synthesis of the present of the
HC, but of course that's absurd heresy.﻿

Others more orthodox in their tastes
maintain that Time itself revolves around the rim of the Sun-Lord's
chariot wheel (which one is a matter of intense debate).

Whatever the true nature of this
movement, I call on my friend Vsevolod Ivanov (the painter not the
famous Soviet writer) and his wonderful paintings to provide
snapshots--it's unclear in what point of the cycle actually
occur/occurred--of that great civilization and its successor states.